Waterford Institute of Technology’s Telecommunications Software and Systems Group (TSSG) held the first meeting of the EU – India Cooperation Platform in Future Internet and Electronic Media project (short name: FI-MEDIA) during the first week of December, 2014in New Delhi. Coordinated by TSSG, FI-MEDIA has two India partners, India Institute of Technology Delhi (IIT Delhi) and Beyond Evolution Tech Solutions Private Ltd (beTS). The project also has the strong support of the EU NEM Technology Platform steering board of which the FI-MEDIA coordinator, James Clarke (TSSG) is a member and a similar platform in India called the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI). The project falls under the EU identifier called EU-India Research and Innovation Partnership, whose EU reference is EuropeAid/135-474/DD/ACT/IN and managed by the Delegation of the European Union to India in New Delhi, India. The four year FI-MEDIA project was selected under the category related to Information and Communications Technologies.

In terms of benefits for this particular awarded project, it puts TSSG and Ireland as a lead partner in a strategic international cooperation (INCO) project with a country that is a major global player in ICT and it is a direct continuation of the good work started in the TSSG coordinated Building International Cooperation for Trustworthy ICT (BIC) project. In fact, the INCO models developed within BIC will be further customized for the FI-MEDIA domain clusters development. Furthermore, the project is complementary and closely aligned with the WIT International office and the TSSG led proposal process for FI-MEDIA was significantly assisted by WIT Research Support Unit (RSU), Science Foundation Ireland’s International Strategic Cooperation Award (SFI ISCA) Research India Ireland project, and an Irish Research Council New Foundations Scheme 2013 grant awarded to Mr. Clarke entitled International cooperation long term strategy planning and development between Ireland and India for EU Horizon 2020 cooperation (short name: INDO-IE-EU2020).

Another important benefit of this project is the TSSG will be able to leverage its role within the EU’s NEM Technology Platform steering board, which is one of the official H2020 Technology Platforms, since the ultimate goal of the FI-MEDIA project is the establishment of EU-India based cluster to cluster (C2C) partnerships that will eventually become members and contribute to the NEM technology platform. As international cooperation and expansion is part of the global strategy of NEM, the proposed FI-MEDIA project has been strongly welcomed and supported by NEM since inception.

The web portal of the project is under development and will be available shortly.